Age of Empires II ^[1] - believe it or not, we still play it regularly on our lan partys. One of the best and funniest realtime strategy games ever made.

Serious Sam is always fun with 2-8 people. Co-op FPS with scaling difficulty based on the number of players. Drop in/out is another bonus.

There are always real-time strategy games like StarCraft II, Warcraft III, Command and Conquer. We also like to play some of the funmaps. 4-8 Players are usually enough for that.

The Civilization games are fun small group marathon games. Plus, being turn based you can start and stop them easily.

Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 are the single greatest LAN party games when you have exactly 8 people. You get to split up into two teams of 4 and fight each other, zombies vs. survivors (called Versus mode).

I have been doing this almost every month with 7 close friends for well over a year now and it's never a dull time. We'll go through a campaign and at the end, we'll discuss everything that happened over the course of the game.

AlienSwarm ^[1] is a free co-op distributed through Steam.

It allow to play 4 people together, but it is already in development a mod to allow more players like 6/8.

I'll go for the obvious.

Unreal Tournament 2004

The perfect LAN game. Scales well from one-on-one deathmatch to 32 players. 2v2 CTF is a blast, and there's a ton of options and mods that completely change how the game is played.

StarCraft

The other perfect LAN game. Again, it scales quite well. I've had a blast with playing against just one other person and getting owned by seven Koreans. It's been around for twelve years and everyone still plays it, so you know it's good.

Now some slightly less obvious choices.

Soldat ^[1]

It's a 2D CTF-oriented shooter. Physics-based, lots of jetpacks and gun fire. 2D Tribes. If you don't have enough people for an interesting game, you can always just connect to a server and team up on the unsuspecting other team.

Galcon ^[2]

Realtime risk. In space. I made the mistake of loading up the flash version of the game at a LAN party and we lost half the population as they proceeded to play this for the rest of the night. There are also paid downloadable versions you can use if you don't have internet at the LAN.

Savage ^[3]

You'll need at least four people for this to work well, but it's a great LAN game. A hybrid of RTS and FPS, each team has a commander with an overhead view and troops in FPS view. Things get quite interesting with a small number of players, as you must balance switching between RTS mode and FPS mode.

Trackmania ^[1] is also a game that is fun with only a few players. We like to play it between larger sessions (i.e. after a Empire Earth game) to relax a little.

We usually play CS:S (Counter Strike: Source). It's really a lot of fun to play with a small group (2v2, 3v3, etc). And you can use bots if you want; we usually don't.

I know it's old, but it seems like every time we bust out DOOM 2, people have a ridiculous amount of fun. New hardware only makes the game faster and more furious.

A pretty unusual game is DefCon ^[1]. Personally I don't like it that much, cause I suck at it, but the other players on our LANs like it. It's nuclear war, (I think) six parties are trying to destroy each other (or form alliances and destroy the other group(s)).

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is still a huge hit at our small LANs. 3v3 or 4v4 on a 6 map campaign is really fun.

Not to mention that W:ET is free!

We used to play several older games with 2-4 players:

• Atomic Bomberman ^[1]
• Quake 3 ^[2]
• Unreal Tournament ^[3]

And also some turn based strategies (I'm not sure if you'd like them via LAN as it might get pretty slow):

• Heroes of Might and Magic 3 ^[4]
• Worms 2 ^[5]

Good old Diablo II

Titan Quest

Neverwinter Nights

Guild Wars

If you're looking for fast-paced action and thinking, Armagetron ^[1], a Tron-Motorcycle game might be the right thing. On the other hand, OpenLieroX ^[2] does also provide fast-paced action, but with less thinking. ;)

Warzone 2100 ^[1] is a real-time strategy game, originally developed by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos-Interactive™.

Although comparable to other 3D RTS games, it does contain some features that are unique. These include various radar technologies, a greater focus on artillery and counter-battery technologies, as well as a different vehicle design method. It was released in 1999 for PC and Playstation®.

In December 2004 Warzone was released by its copyright holders, Eidos-Interactive™, to the public under the GNU General Public License (GPL) ( later clarified to include the soundtrack and videos as well), and the Warzone 2100 Project (formerly known as Warzone 2100 Resurrection Project) was born.

After the game has been ported to run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, the Warzone 2100 Project aims to further improve the game, but since this game is free, all development happens in our free time, and therefore can be a bit slow at times.

In Warzone 2100 ^[2], you command the forces of The Project in a battle to rebuild the world after mankind has almost been destroyed by nuclear missiles.

The game offers campaign, multi-player, and single-player skirmish modes. An extensive tech tree with over 400 different technologies, combined with the unit design system, allows for a wide variety of possible units and tactics.

StarCraft: Brood War and Quake3 are always fun

Me and my friends still play Empire Earth ^[1] from time to time. It's a really great game.

We are having daily XBlast ^[1] sessions at work which are extremely entertaining. It's a Bomberman-style game for 2-6 players. It's also highly customizable, so you can play in teams or alone, for an hour or just a few minutes, which is ideal for irregular coffee breaks in a working environment.

Rise of Nations Gold ^[1] is what we play alot...There is only 3-5 of us total, but there is always computers to add to the mix.

OpenArena ^[1]:

OpenArena is a community-produced deathmatch FPS based on GPL idTech3 technology. There are many game types supported including Free For All, Capture The Flag, Domination, Overload, Harvester, and more. There are 17 unique player models to choose from and 12 weapons.

I used to play Ignition ^[1], but expect large pixels (late 90s)

Sins of a Solar Empire

I'm so dissapointed that nobody wrote about:

WORMS!!!

Come on. This series was, is and will be the utter-most funny series of game. Starting from basic 2d which can be handled by almost any computer up to the latest 3d, this games can be played by everyone! And we can tell there no 'violence' in them :P

Worms - wikipedia.org ^[1]

FlatOut 2 ^[1] is nice for playing in between. It has no steep learning curve, except halfway knowing which cars are usable.
If I recall correctly, the latest title of the FlatOut series ("Ultimate Carnage") does no longer have a LAN-mode, so I'*m not sure, how well that would work.

Used to play Moto Racer ^[1] with roommates. Easy to get start, competitive and fun.

Play Call of Duty - Capture the Flag. Its unlimited fun especially when you have to plan how to defend your flag and how to attack opponent's. We have played COD's Capture the Flag game with as less as 4 players (2x2) on smallish maps and as much as 20 players (10x10) on large maps and it has always been a lot of fun.

For (4x4), you have to coordinate and communicate very well among your team member e.g., who is defending at a certain time and who is attacking enemy's base. If defense leaves its place then retrieving your flag is a hard thing to do. When you have more players, you can assign people different roles such as snipers, machine gunners, midfielders (as we used to call them :), attackers, defenders etc.

Warhammer 40k ^[1]. Great for anywhere from 2v2 to larger free for all matches! Also very fun for comp stomps because the A.I. will really give you a run for your money.

Strategic-point-capture oriented gameplay, visually pleasing with lots of big explosions and very detailed death animations (heroes units literally impale lesser enemies and throw them quite a distance away), and well balanced for multiplayer.

The Rainbow Six ^[1] / SWAT ^[2] games make for amusing LAN parties with 2-16 players.

Also in that "area" of a little unusual games: Babo Violent ^[1] which is free. There is a new version available on steam, but I like the old one better. You roll around as a ball, armed with different weapons (MG, Rocket Launcher, Flame Thrower). It's red vs. blue, CTF and basically 2D (no jumping, no hight differences - although in the new one there are). Really fun to play in between.

Pretty much any Command & Conquer game. Maps are tailor-made to 8 players and under.

It's the number one choice for me and my friends either online or on a LAN. And it's heaps of fun.

Company of Heroes

Demigod (Adventure\Arena)

Moonbase Commander ^[1]. It's older, but a lot of fun for 2-4 players. It's a turn-based strategy game where you expand out your base while trying to prevent the expansion of your opponents base(s). I don't know who the rights-holders are at the moment, so I doubt you'll find it on any of the online distribution services (LazyWeb, please prove me wrong!) so your best bet for finding a copy is probably eBay.

All Battlefield games | FlatOut 2 | Warcraft III (hero defense maps are fun too)

Borderlands. ^[1] It's a 4 player loot-based FPS. Kind of like FPS Diablo. Really fun to LAN.